


The most pleasant tale of Lady Bessy

by La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)



Category: 15th Century CE RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Gen, Genderswap, Murder, Unexpected Character Survival, Violence, art that should exist but sadly does not, bad chronicle jokes, epic succession fail, references to period-accurate underage sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:28:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four titles Elizabeth of York never held, and one she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The most pleasant tale of Lady Bessy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lost_spook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_spook/gifts).



> As soon as I saw this prompt, I had to fill it, although I'm afraid there's perhaps less Henry in it than you might like. There is, however, a lot of Elizabeth, so I hope you enjoy! Title is taken from an anonymous sixteenth-century ballad (one version of the full text can be found here).

_i. Prince of Wales_

 

The queen's doctor, Master Dominick, slid precariously across the floor rushes as he dashed from doorway of the birthing chamber to the great hall where the king waited, half-drunk already with fear for his wife and anticipation for his heir. Despite the chill of February, a bare few days before the feast of Saint Valentine in the year of grace 1466, the room was sweltering, rank with spilled wine and sweat and too-strong perfume. The doctor straightened his back and declaimed his news to the room in the closest approximation he could manage of a royal herald.

 

"Your Grace, my lords and ladies, the queen is delivered of a healthy boy! All hail Richard, Prince of Wales!"

 

There had been no question within the family that England's heir would be Richard, named after his grandfather and after the long-ago king from whom they derived their right to the throne. Of course, the naysayers whispered of curses and childlessness and civil war that followed the reigns of the first two Richards.

 

To this, King Edward merely replied with a laugh, "Ay, gentlemen, but why do you not consider the unfortunate second Edward, whose son and namesake conquered France? There is power in a name, but only what the man makes of it. My son," he paused after the words, "shall be as great in battle as the Lionheart and his court as brilliant as the second Richard's. Mark my words, gentlemen, England shall not be the same."

 

Standing godfathers to the new Prince of Wales at Westminster Abbey were two additional Richards--his mother's father, named Lord Rivers upon his daughter's marriage to the king, and the Earl of Warwick, the greatest lord in the country outside the royal family.

 

At first, it was a game of sorts.

 

The Earl of Warwick appeared at the christening with a splendidly wrought goblet of Florentine gold, finely etched and glittering with gems. Beside it, the rather plainly bound volume presented by Sir Anthony Woodville, elder brother of the queen, looked shabby indeed, until it was revealed to be an ancient manuscript of the _Secreta Scretorum_ , the book of advice from Aristotle to Alexander the Great, lost for centuries in the infidel east before the fall of Constantinople saw it resurface in Venice just a decade earlier. King Edward laughed heartily and congratulated both men on their excellent taste.

 

For the prince's second birthday, Warwick presented him with a magnificent saddle tooled and edged with gold, just the right size for a small pony. The pony, he assured King Edward, would be forthcoming once it was fully trained. Once the footman in Warwick's livery departed, Sir Antony stepped forward and pulled a small object from his sleeve. It looked for all the world like a wooden egg with a pin in the side.

 

Frowning, the prince picked it up, and promptly dropped it. A low murmur of laughter swept the room before he glared in a manner surprisingly like his mother's and picked it up again, pulling the pin from the side. Through some intricate, invisible mechanism, the egg twisted and spun and _transformed_ , and a delicately carved wooden bird stood in the prince's hand. He shrieked with delight.

 

"There's more, Your Grace," said Sir Antony. Wide-eyed, the prince held out the bird. Sir Antony fit the pin back into its hole and twisted it. The bird began to chirp, and the court applauded wildly, the prince loudest of all.

 

Warwick looked thunderous. The king stood. "Gentlemen, cousins both, we thank you on our son's behalf. He shall be a mighty prince indeed, when he already commands such loyalty at his age."

 

Prince Richard tugged at his father's robe. "Papa."

 

King Edward looked down at his son. "Not now, Dickon. Papa's busy."

 

The two exchanged a long look, matched blue eyes mirroring one another. Then, they both looked at the Earl of Warwick and Sir Antony. "We do not wish there to be discord between you. You are both our blood now, and surely enough of that has been spilt ere this."

 

It was perhaps naïve to have thought that Warwick would be satisfied to be mere godfather to the next king. He had, after all, guided the present one to his throne--placed him on it, in his view, although King Edward would have disagreed. Rather than foster his son with Neville or Woodville, therefore, the little prince was kept at court, soon joined by several sisters and, eventually, a second brother, named Edward.

 

Theirs was a court to rival Arthur's, or so the chroniclers wrote, only King Edward had an heir, which Arthur had not. And even Arthur's court had monsters in the shadows.

 

 

_ii. Queen of France_

 

The future king of France, the Dauphin Charles, was without question the ugliest young man Bess had seen in all of her fifteen years. A gargantuan nose sat like an oliphaunt's in the middle of his decidedly turnipy face, and his tiny eyes leered at her bosom despite her best efforts to engage them elsewhere. She pasted a smile on her face and clutched her sister's hand behind her back. That he was the same age as her younger brother Ned and three years her junior made it all the worse.

 

The audience finally came to a blessed conclusion and Bess fled to her chambers, where she threw herself across the bed with a groan. "Cecily, I think I shall die. I shall kill myself on my wedding night."

 

"And then you shall go to Hell like all the other suicides," replied her sister as she closed the door behind her.

 

"Martyrdom, Cis! Martyrdom!"

 

"For shame, Bess! Don't blaspheme. You'll do no such thing," Cecily informed her. "They say the king of Scotland's son is madder than a nest of snakes, but I shall marry him an it be our father's will."

 

"I know, sister. And I shall be Queen of France and my sons shall rule over what was meant to be England's, and perhaps someday we shall have an empire again as Papa wishes." She sighed. "Sadly, it seems his character is little better than his looks. Did you see him pinch our lady mother?"

 

Cecily giggled. "Ay, I thought she might slap him for his presumption."

 

"She would have slapped any one of us for that. Even Neddie. Or," she added with a roll of her eyes, "pardon me, _his Grace the Prince of Wales_."

 

"It is his title, Bess, like it or not."

 

"It isn't a matter of like or not. I'm still the eldest and he should treat me as such. He's become such a little prig, trapped out in Wales with Uncle Antony." Bess sighed. "It must be lonely for him, I suppose. Although you wouldn't think it to ask him. Nothing but philosophers and Greek and 'Vegetius this' and 'Pythagoras that'. Was he always that way?"

 

"I don't remember," Cecily said, sounding surprised. "Isn't that strange?"

 

It was and it wasn't--Neddie had been sent off to Ludlow when he was barely out of swaddling-clothes. There hadn't been time to know him.

 

Bess shrugged off the thought, remembering again the source of her present plight. "Did you hear when Monseigneur the Dauphin asked Papa about Mistress Shore? Can you believe it?" Even the normally urbane French ambassador had blanched when the son of his royal master had enquired without a trace of shame how best to find women with husbands as obliging as the gentleman married to King Edward's favourite mistress. "Even Papa didn't know what to say!"

 

"I overheard our uncle Gloucester ask our uncle Rivers if the French king expected Papa to help his son betray his marriage vows after paying so handsome a dowry." Cecily pursed her lips. "I do not wish to think ill of Papa, but..."

 

"Sometimes you wonder if our uncle Gloucester was right about France?" Bess pushed herself up so her back rested against the counterpane. "I did not, I confess, until I met the illustrious Dauphin."

 

"Perhaps you and he ought to make common cause, then. You break the Dauphin's heart while our uncle invades his kingdom. What could possibly go wrong?"

 

What, indeed. Bess stuck out her tongue at Cecily. "And what if I did break his heart, Cis, what then? I would still be married to him."

 

Cecily reached out and took her hands. "Then perhaps you will need to make do."

 

The French delegation stayed in Windsor for the better part of the summer, the Dauphin taking full advantage of the king's forests, sometimes spending days at a time on the hunt. Although Bess did her utmost, she knew him no better at his departure, soon after Michaelmas, than she did at his arrival.

 

When she arrived at Calais the following year, she feared the worst. After what seemed like an endless series of farewells--to her father, her mother, her sisters, to _London_ , which somehow hurt most of all--she surrendered to the awfulness of the _mal-de-mer_ and the Channel squalls and was huddled in bed in the English fortress at Calais when the door opened to admit a woman not too much older than herself.

 

"Madame la Dauphine, I trust you are much improved on land." She was neither beautiful nor homely, but there was a _presence_ about her that reminded Elizabeth of the mother she had left behind. "I am Anne, the Dauphin's sister."

 

"Madame de Beaujeu," Bess remembered, forcing herself to her feet. "I beg your pardon, but I am not quite..." She struggled into her robe, pulling the fur-lined velvet close. "I'll improve, but it may take some days."

 

" _La Manche_ has that effect on all but the best sailors at this time of year." Leaning forward, she added under her breath, "No doubt it will take my brother as long to make himself presentable, as I am certain you realised when he visited last year."

 

Elizabeth gave a surprised squeak of laughter. "Ay, I suppose he is easily distracted."

 

"A queenly answer indeed."

 

"I trust you expected no less."

 

They eyed one another, not so much with suspicion as with measurement. "I confess," Madame de Beaujeu finally said, "that I did not know what to expect. My father sent me ahead to give him my honest opinion."

 

"And what shall that opinion be, Madame?" Nervousness fluttered in Elizabeth's stomach. She knew as well as any in her father's court that the French king was not to be trusted, that he would seek any excuse to break the engagement and marry his son to the newly available Duchess of Burgundy. "Do I pass muster?"

 

She smiled. "I think we shall do very well together, _belle-soeur_ , and that my father may rest easy."

 

Perhaps France would not be so bad after all.

 

 

_iii. Duchess of Milan_

 

It was the second time Leonardo da Vinci had painted the Duchess of Milan. It was something about her face, he told her in what she had come to realise was his customary distracted manner. "I sometimes think, Madonna, that you are three women and not simply one. I must paint them all."

 

Elizabeth had to bite her lip not to laugh. It was true, though not at all well known, that she had three names. Elisabetta, by the grace of God and her husband, Duchess of Milan. Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, niece to King Richard of England, third of that name since the Conquest. And the third, secret, name--Princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter and rightful heir to King Edward the Fourth of England, _recquiescat in pace_. For nearly ten years that last name was never spoken above a whisper, and south of the Alps, not at all.

 

Here, they had more immediate concerns than faraway England, finally quiet after so many years of war. Elizabeth's greatest concern was within the red-brick walls of the castle, smiling genially across the table at her during dinner, and watching her husband like the great lizards that lived in the Nile and feasted on human flesh.

 

 _Il Moro_.

 

But she would not think of him now. "Who am I this time, Messer da Vinci?"

 

The first time he had painted her, it was as the Virgin Mary in the newly consecrated chapel at Santa Maria della Grazie. He had captured the moment just before the Annunciation--the Archangel poised in the window, one hand outstretched to hail the Mother of God. Mary had yet to see him, perched catlike on a window-seat with a book cradled in her hands. The first time Elizabeth set eyes on the mural, she had stared for several moments at the Virgin's face before turning to the artist in accusation. _So peaceful, Messer Leonardo. Where did you find that in my face?_ The artist had merely smiled and replied that he had the advantage of seeing her when she could not see herself.

 

"You are La Duchessa," he replied now, gesturing to the gems weighing down her gown. It was her official portrait; next, it would be Gian's turn, if she could convince her husband to sit still long enough. That was not Gian's way. Their son squirmed less at two years old than the Duke of Milan at nearly two and twenty.

 

She could not blame Gian, not really. His father had died when he was seven years old and his mother would have taxed the patience of a saint. The Lady Bona of Savoy had held the regency of Milan on her son's behalf for the better part of three years after she was widowed, exiling her husband's many brothers to keep the path of succession clear. That, however, was before Tassino, whose career as official carver at the Duke of Milan's table was transformed when he found himself in the Dowager Duchess' bed. Now the laughingstock of the court, Lady Bona paced the dark corridors of the _Rochetta_ , the oldest portion of the castle, muttering and dreaming of revenge.  Elizabeth's own introduction to her was etched forever in her memory, a frigid morning in November a bare few days after her arrival in Milan.

 

The Dowager Duchess was a tiny figure perched on a carved wooden chair. In her youth she had been contracted to marry Elizabeth's father till he threw her over for a penniless widow and nearly lost his kingdom and his life. Elizabeth could not see Lady Bona's face behind the thick veil it was said she had worn in public since the death of her husband ten years before, but she could imagine it from the voice. Harsh, cold, pitiless, unyielding as steel. She spoke French with the rolling accent of the southern mountains, a far cry from the Burgundian consonants of Elizabeth’s grandmother. "You will answer my questions, _demoiselle_ , and you will answer them truthfully."

 

"Of course, Madame," she replied. She wondered if the movement of Lady Bona's head was one of surprise that Elizabeth understood her. For the thousandth time, she cursed her uncle for leaving her to the mercies of a woman who had, from what she could see, never forgiven the slight the last king of England had done her. Some part of Elizabeth wanted to pity Lady Bona, even knowing her future husband's mother would scorn the emotion and cheerfully spit on her, were the opportunity to arise. "I have nothing to hide."

 

"We shall see. Your age?"

 

"In three weeks' time, I will be twenty."

 

She felt older than twenty and did not doubt that she looked it, but Elizabeth had dazzled her uncle’s court for well over a year and had followed her mother's prudent advice to acquire her trousseau en route through Bruges, Dijon, and Geneva and have her gowns made in the Milanese style when she arrived. Her intended was dazzled, the court was mesmerised, and the Dowager Duchess was forgotten. Bona of Savoy had vowed vengeance upon King Edward and his queen, but it would not be long before precedence would force her to bow to Edward's daughter. Having seen her own mother weep bitter tears on the day King Richard and Queen Anne were crowned, Elizabeth could at least understand her rage.

 

"They say that you are used goods." At the words, Elizabeth's eyes snapped to the unseen face behind the veil. "That you shared your uncle's bed; that he poisoned his wife and would have made you Queen of England."

 

Her mother's warning had been blunt. _They will ask you, Elizabeth. You must have an answer_. She memorised them and practised them in the darkness as they waited in Geneva for the Alpine passes to open. Even still, the words stung like a lash. "Lies, Madame. All lies. When my father lived, I was betrothed to the Dauphin, now the Most Christian King of France, but he saw fit to break that arrangement; it was none of my doing. My lord of Richmond did swear to marry me when he took my uncle's throne, and then my uncle killed him in battle. There is no more to tell."

 

"Hm." Lady Bona leant forward, hands gripping the arms of the chair. "And your uncle? What of King Richard?"

 

"Her Grace the queen died from a wasting sickness. I was there and I nursed her till the end." It was more than the Duchess needed to know but Elizabeth could not stop herself. She could still remember the smell--sour and metallic with an undertone she remembered from when her father died. Death had its own scent and it haunted Elizabeth's nightmares. It had been the devil's own luck that Queen Anne had died while an eclipse darkened the streets of London like the frown of God himself. She raised her head and tried to meet the Duchess' eyes behind the veil. "What you must think of me, Madame, to imagine I would feel anything but repugnance for the man who murdered my brothers."

 

"Your bastard brothers," Lady Bona all but interrupted, malice sharpening the words. "It's why he chose you, you know. Il Moro, my dearest brother-in-law, shames my son before the world by marrying him to the dead King of England's by-blow."

 

Elizabeth had asked her mother once and only once if the rumours were true. They had just watched the Archbishop of Canterbury lead Elizabeth’s younger brother out of sanctuary to join the Prince of Wales in the Tower, not knowing then that it would be the last time they ever saw him. The queen--she would never be anything else to Elizabeth, no matter what Parliament said--stood alone by the window, rosary gripped between her bone-white fingers. _Oh, my poor girl. Do you honestly think it matters? Clearly it didn't to your father_. It was horribly funny, Elizabeth had realised in that instant, and she found herself clinging to her mother in peals of sobbing laughter.

 

Elizabeth's striking resemblance to her father had made her a favourite in London, and it was his charm she had turned in full force upon the Milanese, but the chill in the smile she now gave the Duchess would have made her mother proud. "I shall remember that, Madame. Do give my regards to the carver."

 

The gasp from behind her was unmistakeable. Cecily had a particular squeak that tended to appear when she was scandalised. Moments like these were half the reason the queen had insisted that Cecily accompany her elder sister to Milan and that their uncle arrange a suitable match for her there. No doubt Cecily was already regretting it.

 

Completely to her surprise, however, the Lady Bona let out a wheezing noise that might have been laughter. "You already know the gossip, I see. Beware, then, for they will watch you and they will flatter you, and they will glory in your fall as they have in mine."

 

As the world well knew after, Bona of Savoy was no prophet. Leonardo da Vinci painted the Duchess Elisabetta a third time, as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with the French King Charles VIII as the Emperor Maxentius. Pope Alexander VI received his most distinguished guests in a chamber where his throne was flanked by two Catherines--a copy of da Vinci's, and Maestro Pinturicchio's fresco of his daughter Lucrezia. When asked why, he replied that salvation was to be found in the most unexpected of places.

 

 

_iv. Queen Mother_

 

On the morning of the feast day of Saint Scholastica in the year of grace 1503, Queen Elizabeth opened her eyes to find the Spanish princess looking down at her, concern in her wide, hazel eyes. " _O Santa Maria_ , thank God! The midwife feared it was puerperal fever, my lady, and that we would lose you."

 

"Nay, my dear Catherine, I will not leave you yet." Even to speak was exhausting, but she found the strength to squeeze the young girl's hand. "I promise."

 

It was several weeks before the queen was well enough to reappear in court, long enough for the king's fraying nerves to set everyone on edge. Only young Prince Harry seemed oblivious, having spent the days since hearing of his mother's recovery in the full whirl of preparations for a masque to celebrate her return. Though only a few months from his twelfth birthday, he insisted on taking charge of all the arrangements himself.

 

The masque would also mark the official return of the widowed Princess of Wales to the court. The queen had insisted and the king allowed it, although when Harry named Princess Catherine the leading lady, King Henry gave finally gave voice to his misgivings.

 

"I don't like the way Harry looks at her, Bess." Elizabeth did not respond, but kept her eyes on him as he paced before the hearth. "It's as though she's a prize he needs to claim. He's got everything else of Arthur's, why not his wife too?"

 

"Henry, you can't mean that. Harry adored his brother, worshipped him, and he's barely more than a child." Even as she spoke, Elizabeth considered the possibility. The French king had married the previous king's queen, but the kings had been cousins, not brothers. "The dispensation alone would cost a king's ransom."

 

"And Pope Alexander will extort whatever he can," said Henry with a grimace. "He always has."

 

"There, there." She made a vague motion with her hand. "We need to find a wife for Harry, then. Someone else. And of a husband for Catherine, of course."

 

"It's a bloody shame!" She knew he was thinking of the dowry, the chests and chests of gold long ago spent. They would need to find a new marriage portion for her--something appropriately generous--although that would be simple compared to the bridegroom. The wars of Elizabeth's father's lifetime had culled the ranks of eligible men in England, and it was too risky to try to send her abroad.

 

"Could we send her back to Spain?" Her husband's question roused her from the brown study.

 

"Henry!" she gasped. "Don't be absurd!"

 

But he was smiling. "Woolgathering, wife?"

 

"I was thinking what a sad dearth of young men there are for dear Catherine. She pines so, the poor girl." Harry was thankfully too young for Catherine to take him seriously. Elizabeth was too lax with him, had always been, but it was difficult to be cross with Harry when he looked so like her father and her long-dead brother Dickon. "Perhaps we should send Harry from court for a few months." Ludlow was on her lips, but she stopped, tears pooling in her eyes, remembering others who had gone to that castle and never returned. _Ned. Arthur. Not Harry too, God_.

 

A glance at her husband's face revealed that his thoughts had taken a similar turn. Tossing his gloves on the nearby chair, Henry sat on the edge of the bed and took his wife in his arms. "There, there. It will not be Ludlow, Bess, I promise. The North, maybe. You spent some time in Sheriff Hutton, did you not?"

 

"Only a few months, but it was a pleasant enough place." Of course, Yorkshire had held long and hard for Elizabeth's uncle even after his death and continued to be a thorn in her husband's side. "It might do him good to be away from court. He needs responsibility, Henry, or he'll grow restless."

 

It was strange that the thought of battle did not strike the fear in her that it did in so many mothers. Her father had never lost a battle, and from what little Henry had told Elizabeth, her uncle Richard might as well have thrown himself beneath his enemies' swords at the end. No, Elizabeth had never feared battles. It was illness she feared above all things, the death that lurked in palace shadows and dank alleyways.

 

"He's flighty," Henry was saying, a twist to his lips. "He falls asleep in Council meetings. Arthur never did." After a moment, he sighed. "He would have made a great king."

 

"And so will Harry. You must give him time, husband. You must give him a chance. Send him to Sheriff Hutton or Middleham or even York. Let him come to know the people--learn to rule them."

 

It turned out to be a masterstroke. The presence of the young Prince of Wales who so resembled his Plantagenet grandfather seemed to calm the worst of the unrest. The Yorkshiremen may never rest easy under the rule of Henry the Seventh, but Elizabeth hoped they might come to accept Henry the Eighth.

 

Six years later, Harry knelt before the altar at Westminster Abbey and was crowned King of England. Beside him was the French king's sister Marguerite, who he had married the previous year, head bowed, her customary smirk hidden for the solemn occasion. Elizabeth, clad in mourning for her husband, watched from the gallery above.

 

Perhaps the wars she had known all her life would finally be over.

 

 

_v. Queen of England_

 

"Still abed, daughter?" It was her mother's voice, the ever-present note of frustration ringing in the words. "It is well past dawn and your bridegroom awaits."

 

The heavy drapes were thrust aside and Elizabeth winced as the sunlight hit her full in the eyes. "My bridegroom is in no hurry, my lady, as you have told me many times before."

 

"Elizabeth, must you be so difficult?"

 

"It's the truth." She cupped her hands around the goblet of warmed ale her sister Anne had brought her and took a slow, luxurious sip. "I never thought it would be like this."

 

"You were content to marry the Dauphin, were you not?" The former queen of England lowered herself gingerly into a nearby chair. "This is no different."

 

"But it isn't _right_. I'm not supposed to be queen of England. Everyone knows that."

 

"That's enough, child!" Her mother's eyes were on her now, a startling shade of grey-green that Elizabeth had always envied. "We cannot change the past, sweetling, much as we may wish it."

 

The unexpected endearment brought tears pricking to Elizabeth's eyes. "Do you regret marrying Papa?"

 

For a few moments, her mother did not answer, frowning into space. "Nay, child. I regret a great many things about your father, but I would not have been without him for all the world." She rose to her feet and reached out to take Elizabeth's hands in hers. "Like or not, you shall be queen of England because it is yours by right of blood and birth. Do not let your husband ever tell you otherwise, or that jumped-up mother of his."

 

"She frightens me, Mama."

 

"Oh, for heaven's sake, you could break her over your little finger," snapped her mother. "It is _you_ the people love. Not Henry Tudor of Richmond." Reaching forward, she brushed several wayward curls out of Elizabeth's face. "You owe him nothing, daughter. It is he who owes his crown to you, and he knows it."

 

She knew it well. The citizens of London in particular had rallied around the princess they proudly claimed as their own, to the point of sending a delegation to the new king's December parliament with a pointed reminder of his betrothal. "Then I shall do all in my power to be worthy of it."

 

For what Elizabeth thought might be the first time in her life, her mother gave her a smile of unalloyed approval. "You are my daughter. Of course you will."

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _Section i_  
>  Master Dominick was a real person. According to London chronicler Robert Fabyan, he spent the last several months of Queen Elizabeth's pregnancy proclaiming that she was going to have a son, and planted himself 'outside the second chamber door' while the queen was giving birth, so he might be the first to bring the news to the world. Instead, the queen gave birth to a daughter, and one of her ladies reportedly informed Dominick that "Ladyes what so euer the Quenes grace hathe here wythin/suer it is that a Fole standithe there wythoute."
> 
> Clocks did exist in fifteenth-century England, although they were relatively rare. They were more easily found in Burgundy, where Antony Woodville spent a great deal of time, including in 1467 and 1468 during the negotiations for Margaret of York to marry Charles of Burgundy. This is also a rather self-indulgent reference to the hero of Dorothy Dunnett's _House of Niccolò_ , who spends a lot of time making mechanical toys.
> 
>  _Section ii_  
>  Anne de Beaujeu was named Regent of France on behalf of her younger brother Charles VIII and ruled for him through most of his reign when he was off attempting to conquer Italy.
> 
>  _Section iii_  
>  There is some precedent for marriage alliances between England and Milan in this period; Lionel of Clarence, second son of Edward III, married Violante Visconti in 1368, her niece Caterina almost married Richard II in 1379, and diplomatic reports imply that Henry VII may have considered a similar alliance in the late 1480s, although he ultimately abandoned it.
> 
>  _Section iv_  
>  A number of historians, including some contemporary to Henry VII, remarked upon how much he changed after first the death of his heir in 1501, and less than two years later, that of his wife. The problematic status of Catherine of Aragon in the English court did not help the situation.


End file.
